


may in berlin

by shcherbatskayas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Catatonia, Character Study, Dehydration, Disordered Eating, Fire Lord Zuko, Gen, Hospitals, Post-Canon, Self-Esteem Issues, Sibling Bonding, Suicidal Gestures, Suicidal Thoughts, Tea, Turtleducks in soup, implied mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 02:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20613233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shcherbatskayas/pseuds/shcherbatskayas
Summary: After losing everything, Azula wakes up in a hospital.





	may in berlin

**Author's Note:**

> i started this fic like, two days before i had to be admitted to the hospital for my gallbladder going bad, kind of forgot about it, remembered its existence last night, and just _had_ to finish it, so you know. here it is! comments and kudos are super appreciated, and ty for reading <3

Azula doesn’t remember getting to the hospital. She remembers being chained to the grate, and she remembers screaming, and she remembers passing out, but she doesn’t remember getting to the hospital. Someone must have unchained her and taken her here, this white-walled building of brick and bones where the commoners go to be sick. Someone thought this was the place for her. They should be executed as soon as possible, because Azula is obviously better than this place. Obviously.

But also, she isn’t. So maybe it’s right, being in the hospital. 

She is, upon waking up and thinking about it for more than a second, better than nothing anymore. Father had made her disposable and only a puppet, so therefore she was disposable and only a puppet. He was right, and so therefore Azula is nothing. It’s that simple, really. That easy. 

She turns her head to the side to get a good look at the hallway. The door here is propped open, and Azula could maybe get up, slam it shut, and start screaming again, but she’s so _tired_. Her limbs feel heavy and frozen, so she just stares out into the hall, head full of the nothing that she is. 

Some time later—Azula can’t quantify it, it slips right through her hands— a nurse looks in and sees that she’s awake. The prospect of moving to shut her out is horrifying, so Azula lets her approach. 

(She once moved across the earth to conquer an unconquerable city, and now she can’t even move across the room to shut a door. Pathetic.)

She bows respectfully when she enters and then pops back up, all cheer and smiles. Hiding fear, but poorly. “How are you feeling, Princess Azula?”

Princess Azula. Not Fire Lord Azula, or Princess Regent. Just Princess Azula. That tells her everything she needs to know about the state of the outside world. Her father has been lost out there, apprehended or killed. Her father has failed, just like she had. It was as if Azula’s faults were contagious; all things considered, they probably were. 

Azula turns her head sharply towards the window and says nothing. She quickly makes up her mind to never speak again. 

***

The logical course of action, she decides, is to starve herself to death. Her father has been defeated, after all. And sure, Azula could break out of this hospital and gather loyalists that she knows are out there and start a little coup d’etat, but she couldn’t even beat Zuko and Katara in an Agni Kai. She couldn’t beat Zuko, Katara, and every army in the known world. She would die, and it wouldn’t even be an honorable and good death. It would be a final shame on top of the pile of shame that her life turned into. Not worth the effort. 

So if she was wrong (and she was), and her father was wrong (and he was), and Azula has no way of proving them right again (which is the current state of things), then she should die from the shame of it. She has been defeated in such a way that no victory can ever be possible, and like all those who have been defeated so finally, she is a failure. And failures just take up space in the world, and so she’s just taking up space, and so therefore she should die. 

But also she can’t make it seem like a proper suicide, becuse royals who kill themselves get their bodies thrown in the street. And sure, Zuko wouldn’t do that, but his defiance of tradition would just be another thing to be ashamed about. Another embarrassment. She couldn’t bear that. So it has to seem at least partially accidental. And so Azula will starve herself to death. Or maybe she’ll dehydrate first. It’s almost like a game, betting on which one will be the one to do her in. If she felt up to talking, she’d ask the hospital staff to take bets. 

The nurses bring her dinner on a tray. Azula does not touch it. They ask if she’s nauseous, and she does not answer. She doesn’t even look at them. She doesn’t want to interact with anyone; she just wants to starve to death in peace. 

But the nurses are determined, and they ask if she’s thirsty, if anything hurts, if she needs another pillow or a blanket or a hairbrush or to see a friend. Nothing tempts an answer out of her. She just lays there, and eventually, she falls asleep.

***

Breakfast comes, and they try the same song and dance as before. Azula’s stomach rumbles, but she ignores it. She failed her country and herself and her father, who was the only person to really love her: she doesn’t deserve to live, let alone eat turtleduck soup. 

They talk to her about the importance of food and water and moving around, as if she doesn’t already know. She stays unresponsive until a nurse taps her shoulder a little too hard and the force of gravity makes Azula turn. She lays on one side, now completely facing the window, and she does not move again. 

***

Footsteps come and go. Every hour or so, a nurse will come in with a fresh glass of water and place it on a table right in front of her, as if seeing it will make Azula want to drink. She just stares past it and is tired, but not in a way where she thinks she can sleep. She just sits there and wonders if it’s possible to starve to death after not eating for less than forty-eight hours because she is tired in the way she imagines she would be on the verge of death. 

A set of footsteps comes in the room too soon after the fourth glass of water. “Hey,” a voice says, and Azula recognizes it as Zuko. 

He pulls a chair over and sits in front of her, next to the glass. He is wearing the robes of a Fire Lord. “How are you doing?”

She says nothing. 

Zuko sighs. “I figured. The doctors said that you weren’t talking. Or moving. Or eating.” 

He pauses, as if he thinks that might get a reaction, but it doesn’t. Azula feels empty, like the inside of a bell. There’s a foggy nothingness in her head, and the only thing that she knows for certain is that she should die. “The doctors said they think it’s a new disease that they found out about a year ago. Catatonia. Sometimes it just happens, but they said that it can be a reaction to bad things, too. There’s medicine that works for it, but they said that it’ll take a day or so for it to get here. And then they’ll give it to you, and then you’ll feel better, and you can go back home.”

Go back home. As if there’s a place for her back home, or anywhere in the world. She would scoff at him if she had the energy to move her face. “I should fill you in on what happened. Just so that nothing is too surprising when you get back out.”

When, and not if. Zuko has faith in her, which is misguided and appalling and all-around gross. His travels must have taught him nothing if he still thinks her capable of anything but death. 

“Father was defeated by the Avatar. He got his bending taken away, and he’s in prison. Some people want a proper trial for him, but I’m not sure about that. It’s something to think about. And, uh, I’m the Fire Lord now, but don’t go calling me Fire Lord Zuko or something ridiculous. I mean, I doubt you would, but...Just Zuko is fine. Or Zuzu. Or whatever. Oh, and there have been a lot of meetings about what we should do now as a nation now that we’re not trying to conquer the world, so I’ve been busy, but I told them that the meeting on how to get all of the troops back within our borders could wait an hour or two. I didn’t want you to sit here totally by yourself.”

Neglect of his duties. Neglect of his duties for _her_. Sentimentality getting in the way of good governance. Zuzu never learns, and Azula feels less empty. She expects to feel mad, but instead she’s feeling something else that she doesn’t know the name of. It’s not a horrible emotion. 

“After all, you’re worth at least ten advisors, even when you’re not feeling well. I miss you in there, you know. You’re smart and sharp and actually have a sense of _humor_. Sure, your jokes aren’t great, but when you’re not trying…”

Saying that she’s not great at something. Obviously trying to provoke a defense. Childish of him, but Zuko looks so grown up. Is so grown up. He’s more grown up than her. He’s more grown up than their father, probably. He might be the only real adult in the royal family left alive, except for maybe Uncle Iroh. Maybe. 

“I miss you in general, really. I miss you right now, and you’re right in front of me. You’re right here, and I miss you!” 

Zuko laughs, but it sounds miserable. It sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “But it’s like you’re not here at all. And I know you’re probably feeling a lot of confusing, horrible bullshit, but I’ve been there. I have! After I got banished by Father, I didn’t speak for three days. I moved around, but I just...I didn’t even know what to say. I want to talk to you about whatever it is you’re feeling, and I want to talk to you about all of the new things I want to do for the Fire Nation, and I want to talk to you about the people I met today, and I…”

He rubs at his eyes and Azula realizes he’s crying. She’s trying to rot, and he’s actually feeling things about it. He’s actually attached. They aren’t crocodile tears (Azula could tell if they were) and there’s no hospital staff nearby. There’s no one he needs to fool into making them think he cares. He actually _does_ care, even though they should be enemies and Azula has failed so profoundly that no one should care about her at all. 

And yet. 

“I bet you’re making fun of me in your head,” he says with a sniffle. “Whenever you’re ready to tell me about it, I’m ready to hear it. Whatever you want to say, whenever you want to say it.”

There are more footsteps, and then someone stops outside of the room. “Fire Lord, the carriage leaves in five minutes.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Zuko promises, and the guard walks away. He turns his gaze back to Azula and folds his hands in his lap. “Feel better, Azula. I love you, and I’ll see you tomorrow”

With that, he gets up and walks away, leaving Azula to deal with the fact that he actually means it. 

***

Uncle Iroh visits later in the day. When he sits down in front of her, he’s carrying a kettle of tea. 

“Green tea. It helps give you energy, should you choose to drink it,” he says, placing it next to the water that she hasn’t touched. It’s after dinner, and Azula is surprised that she’s awake. He removes two cups from the pockets of his robes (how his pockets manage to fit them, she’ll never know) fills them up, and then drinks from one. An invitation for her to do the same.

“You never did like tea,” he notes. Azula can’t make heads or tails of why he’s here, but here Uncle Iroh sits. “I wonder what you like to drink now. I haven’t seen you for more than a few days at a time since you were a child.”

Uncle Iroh didn’t like her as a child. Her mother didn’t, either. She was Ozai’s girl, and raised to be a monster. She is still a monster, really, and Uncle Iroh does not consort with monsters. He still hates her, because he must still hate her, but he’s sitting here. Consorting with monsters. Maybe Zuko asked him to, but Uncle Iroh could easily lie and just pretend to go. He’s as good of a liar as Azula is when it comes down to it; he just does it less frequently. 

He sips his tea in silence. He seems utterly at peace here, with his niece who won’t move or speak. His niece who could kill him, and who has tried to kill him before. Maybe dealing with Zuko just after being banished has made him immune to upset teenagers. 

(Teenager. Azula has never considered herself a teenager, or even a child. She has always been an adult, but now the word crosses her mind and stays there. Teenager.) 

“I don’t know if you can see it in the reflection of the window, but your hair is starting to curl again,” Uncle Iroh says. “After you learned how to straighten it with fire, I didn’t think it would ever happen again, but here we are. I almost forgot that it had curled at all, although perhaps that’s because I’m an old fuddy-duddy.”

He smiles when he says that, his eyes twinkling like it’s some kind of joke. Like he never minded how cruel Azula was to him. Her eyes do not twinkle in turn, but Uncle Iroh chuckles and pats the top of her hand, and he sits there until she falls asleep. 

***

Breakfast comes with Zuko, who sits down with his own tray of the same stuff and eats it. A tactic, maybe. Trying to convince her to mirror him, as if she had done that at any time past the age of four. 

“The soup is good this morning,” he tells her, and Azula can see the knowledge that she loves soup in the front of his mind. As subtle as a bull. 

Then he starts telling her about the meetings. Another one on how to get the soldiers back home, how to integrate them back into society. About how his worry is that soldiers who had put their lives on the line for the Fire Nation won’t have a job when they come back home, but he doesn’t want to create an even bigger military. About how sure he is that Azula will have an idea eventually because everyone is stuck, and Azula thrives when solving the unsolvable problems. About how there’s so much to do, about how exciting it all is. About how scary it all is. About how he thinks Azula will be great out there. 

Zuko still thinks her capable of thriving. Zuko doesn’t look at her, though, and when he leaves, Azula sees why. She can see her own reflection in the glass of the window when she bothers to focus her vision, and she looks like shit. Her skin is pale and dry, and there are deep dark circles beneath her eyes. Her lips are chapped and cracking, and her hair looks disastrous.

She wonders if that’s just the nature of curls, or her inability to try and tame them.

***

The medicine Zuko spoke about comes with dinner. They prop her up and hold her jaw open. Then they pour something down it and Azula chokes before she swallows it. It tastes like ash. 

“We’ll give you another dose in two hours,” one of the nurses says, as if Azula is supposed to be somewhat pleased by this news. 

Two hours, and then again. And then a third time, and then they tell her to go to sleep. 

Wide awake, Azula can't fall asleep until midnight comes. 

***

She wakes up before breakfast. The glass of water on her bed is fresh, probably changed by a night nurse. The sun is rising, but it’s still too dark for Azula to see very much past that glass. It’s ice-less, but she doesn’t know what she would do with the crunch of ice cubes. They would be too harsh on the dry expanse of her throat, which is as itchy and dry as the Si Wong. If she could maybe just scratch at it, get her hands up and…

She gets her hands close to her throat and runs her fingernails along the outside of it, but it doesn’t help any. The itching is somewhere deeper, somewhere unreachable. Azula doesn’t have the strength to tear out her esophagus at the moment, but she might have enough strength for that glass of water. That might be enough. 

First, sitting up. She swings her legs out so that they’re dangling off the bed, and they look spindly and gross and unfamiliar. The legs of someone who’s been in the hospital for four days, give or take. It’s hard to count it. Azula looks away from them and then pulls herself up, the muscles in her core complaining about the unexpected strain. She’ll have to train for at least a week to get this soreness out and back in place, an idea so intimidating after her time doing nothing that giving up on the whole endeavor of drinking water seems like a much better option. But she’s already sitting up, so she keeps going. 

The glass isn’t cold when she touches it. It feels just like everything else in this room, but it’ll work. She opens her mouth without it being pried open (she ought to have bitten the doctor’s hand now that she thinks about it) and then takes a drink.

The itchiness subsides half a glass in, but she goes until the glass is empty. She puts it back down and lays flat on her back. Then, Azula stretches out her legs for a brief, agonizing second, and relaxes them. She does the same for her arms, her shoulders, her neck. It’ll be breakfast soon, judging by where the sun is at, and so Azula shuts her eyes and pretends to be asleep. After all, it would be humiliating to see someone be proud about something like this. 

(And yet she still hears the nurse come in the room and her quiet little gasp, and then the refilling of her glass. It clinks with added ice cubes, and as soon as she’s gone, Azula shoots back up just to feel the cold beneath her fingers.) 

***

When Zuko comes in with lunch, he’s practically vibrating with excitement. 

“You look better,” he says, somehow managing to actually mean it. He sits down and his eyes go wide when Azula sits up and starts to pick at her soup. 

“How does it taste?” He asks, and Azula finds that she actually does have an urge to respond, which she stifles for a reason she cannot name. She still ought to be starving herself to death, but something is keeping her going. 

Another tray comes in, and the nurse is very shy about giving it to Zuko, who smiles and thanks her and treats her like an equal. That’s how things seem to be working now. 

Zuko takes a bite of it. “I think it’s good. There was a really good soup yesterday for dinner. I’ll ask them to make it again when you come back home, because you would have loved it. Admiral Chan almost spit it out, though. Apparently he has a thing against spice.”

Remembering it makes Zuko snort, and Azula rolls her eyes. Admiral Chan dining at the palace. Probably an advisor. If that’s who’s in charge of their navy right now…

The answer hits her suddenly. “Did you figure out how to get the troops back home?”

Zuko drops his spoon. “I, uh...There’s another meeting scheduled. Why? Do you want to come? It’s for two days from now, but if you’re feeling better, you should be able to come. If not, we can put it off, put some more preliminary measures in place and—”

“What’s your mission, exactly?” She interrupts, and Azula makes herself take a good look at him. Zuko looks the same, but there’s something new in his eyes. The weight of being in charge of everything all at once.

“With the nation?” 

“No, with the soup,” she snarks, and then she jumps. She had forgotten that she was capable of that. Zuko looks more amused than annoyed by the appearance of her sass; he better not be taking any of that from other advisors. Not if he wants to keep his hold on the throne. 

“To try and undo at least some of what we’ve done. To get everyone back and make our home a good place to be without ruining everyone else’s. And to make peace with our neighbors. Be friends with them. Treat them well. That sort of thing.”

“And is the state of our navy as I remember it?” 

“Worse,” he groans. “We still haven’t recovered even half of the ships from the Northern Water Tribe incident, and our deployment ships were overworked even before the war ended.”

“And the Water Tribe’s?”

“We can’t steal their ships.”

“We’re not _stealing_,” Azula says. “We’re starting an international, cooperative effort to decolonize previously colonized territories, and being pushy about doing it. Totally different. They can be a part of it or whatever. We’ll have a Fire Nation Admiral on each ship along with a Water Tribe one, and some of their navy men. Not enough that they’d take up more room than the Fire Nation soldiers, but enough to stop any sort of loyalist insurrection should it happen. That should be enough for at least the initial run of things.” 

Zuko pauses, running the numbers in his head. “If we can get a quarter of them to agree to it and can convert some of our steamships to deployment ones, we should be able to get most of them back home in the next three or four months. What about the Earth Nation’s navy?”

“It’s an absolute joke, but they’ll feel left out and get annoyed if we don’t include them. They can...Do something else. Send us location data of where the troops are, maybe. I’d need more time to figure out exactly what I want them doing.”

“Take however much time you need,” Zuko tells her, as if they aren’t on a time crunch. “Also, this is going to sound very cheesy, but I’m glad to hear you talking again.”

Azula takes a sip of water and considers that. She considers her words. “I’m awful,” she says. 

“Azula, no, you’re not aw—”

“Let me finish.” 

Zuko promptly shuts up. 

“I’m awful, and a failure, and all-around am miserable. I can’t even starve to death right. But I know I have some ideas, so use me for those until my brain gives up on me again. Get your reputation built up. Go into your meeting and tell them that and it’ll help you.”

“...I’m not Father,” Zuko says. “I’m not going to use you like that. If you don’t want to be in charge of it, I get it, and I can’t really think of anyone more qualified, but I’m not going to take your stuff and use it to make my reputation better. Not anymore." 

“Well, it’s not like anyone at the palace is going to believe anything good came from me.”

“Yes, they are,” he counters ridiculously. When Azula rolls her eyes, he starts talking again. “Do you want to know the most common question I get from our servants is since all of this has happened?”

“Not particularly.”

“It’s ‘How is your sister? When is she coming home? Is she well?’ They don’t hate you right now; they’re scared for you. They’ve watched you grow up. They know that you’re good, even if it comes out kind of...Well, kind of backwards, frankly. And even the people who don’t like you know that you’re clever. They know that you’re capable of good ideas. They’ll believe it.” 

Zuko sounds very confident about all of it. Confident about her. She knows when she’s been beaten these days, and Zuko is not going to take her idea. It’ll be credited to her, even if he does the legwork of it, and judging by the circles under his eyes, he’s doing enough legwork already.

“Then call me Princess Azula, Coordinator of the International Effort to Return the Troops to the Fire Nation. The name needs to be workshopped, I think. IERT just isn’t catchy.” 

She takes a vicious bite of her bread, and Zuko smiles.

“As you wish,” he says, and puts the piece from his tray onto her plate as she lapses back into an exhausted silence.

***

Azula winds up eating three quarters of her lunch and all of her dinner, something that is promptly deemed miraculous. She drinks water like it’s going out of style, and already, her skin starts to look better. She has the energy to get up now, and try to detangle her hair, and to workshop names for her new little committee. It’ll be good to have something to do. After all, if Zuko is naive enough to keep most of the old guard around, he needs her to be a semi-reasonable force who can get rid of idiots and loyalists. Azula is needed in some capacity, and even if she is a non-person and ultimate failure, that’s enough to keep her going for now. That’s enough to get her through the night. 

“International Disembarkment Committee or Cooperative Disembarkment Committee?” Azula asks when Zuko and Uncle Iroh walk in the next morning. “I’m deciding on names.”

“They both sound lovely to me,” Uncle Iroh says, handing her a pile of clothes. “The doctors cleared you to go back to the palace so long as you keep eating and drinking regularly. We’ll leave you to change, and then we’ll have a celebratory breakfast.”

“Hm,” Azula isn’t sure what to do with that, so she turns to Zuko. “What has everyone been told about where I am?”

“The truth,” he tells her. “That you were injured in the events that happened over the past few days and that you’ve been recovering in the hospital. No details other than that.”

“Keep it that way,” Azula requests, and he nods before leaving. 

She isn’t sure who picked out her clothes. Probably a servant. It’s not the war meeting armor, but instead a set of comfortable day robes in the dark shade of red that she prefers. Azula fumbles with tying everything together, her hands shaky and uncooperative, but she manages. It’s not her neatest look, but it’s a look that’s hers. 

The problem comes with her hair. Doing the old trick of heating her hands and straightening it out would take far too long with this level of curl. It hasn’t waved like this since she was a child, when she knew her father worried about her not being able to properly be seen as Fire Nation royalty because of its inability to be tamed. She tries her usual top knot and leaves a few pieces out at the front, things too stubborn to fit back into her usual role. Things that she leaves be. By the time it’s all over, Azula looks more and less like herself than she can remember. She doesn't know if it’s a good thing or not, and decides to save that analysis for when she’s back in her own room. 

When she emerges, Uncle Iroh is chatting with a nurse about tea flavors. Azula looks at Zuko and pulls a face. “He still does that with everyone?”

“It never stops,” he confirms. “How are you feeling, by the way? About, uh, everything?”

“I would literally rather die than talk about my feelings, Zuzu,” she says, and his expression is unreadable. 

“Well, whenever you’re ready, the door is open,” he tells her. 

Azula doesn’t know how to cross through that door. She can’t even approach it, although she figures she’s a step closer than she was before. 

But there is one door that she can walk through. “I’m heading back to the palace with or without you, Uncle!” She announces, and then starts down the hall. 

She hears him chuckle and say something to the nurse. Zuko falls in step next to her, and it’s not strange to see him in the robes of the Fire Lord now. What is strange is walking towards the exit with a new form of confidence, something fleeting and certain and shining from within. Azula just has to try and keep that thing alive, and she steps out of the hospital with a small flame dancing on her fingers, the first flame in days. 

(The blue is brighter than ever.)

**Author's Note:**

> some end notes:
> 
> 1\. the idea that suicide would be looked down on in the fire nation royal family came mainly from ozai's attitude towards any admission of defeat. that's definitely how he would view suicide, so i figured the idea went a good ways back. 
> 
> 2\. the hair curl is a very stupid headcanon of mine and also symbolic. sorry for being pretentious, y'all. 
> 
> 3\. the si wong desert was the only desert i could find on the a:tla map and azula would _definitely_ know her geography, so i figured she would reference it despite it not being in the fire nation. 
> 
> 4\. catatonia is a symptom of many health issues, including mood disorders, psychotic disorders, parkinson's, encephalitis, kidney problems, diabetes, and thyroid conditions. all things considered, it's pretty rare but also pretty scary. i think the fire nation at the time would have the vocabulary for what the thing is, but not knowledge of the underlying cause. but also i do have azula mental illness headcanons, so you know. it's what's poppin. 
> 
> 5\. any editing errors are the result of me editing it obscenely early in the morning, but that's what insomnia will do to a bitch. i think i caught everything, though. if you notice something egregious, just hmu. 
> 
> 6\. i shit on iroh for liking tea here, but i love tea. i'm literally drinking black tea while writing this end note. do not take the tea hate personally.


End file.
